bottomless chairs.

Published on by Quandie24 Comments

Are you a fan of cane chairs and benches?

I love them.  I have half a dozen of them myself.

But the sad truth about cane is that it’s easy to damage.  So far the cane on two of my chairs has ripped.  And I don’t have the patience for replacing damaged cane.  So, in my opinion, cane chairs are best reserved for occasional use, not rough every day use.

I see a lot of damaged cane chairs for sale at garage sales and on Craigslist.  Sometimes they are priced super cheap, although I also see plenty of ads for pricier chairs where the seller says ‘you can easily add new cane’.  I always laugh when I read those ads.  If it was so easy to do, why didn’t they do it themselves?

I’ve come up with a few ways to work around ruined caning.  On the bench I put in my bedroom I added a cushion where there once was caning.

  On the ‘cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater‘ chair I added an upholstered seat …

Originally I planned to do something similar with a pair of chairs that I picked up last summer at a garage sale.  Don’t be confused by the snow on the ground in this ‘before’ photo.  I purchased the chairs last summer, but took this photo sometime last winter.

 I did add a seat to one of the chairs, which I then paired with the Sea Glass dressing table.

But with spring just around the corner, I decided to turn the 2nd chair into a planter chair.

But first, in case you’re not familiar, what’s a planter chair?

Here is one that I gave to my mother-in-law for mother’s day a couple of years ago.

It’s basically a bottomless chair with a hanging basket of flowers filling up the hole where the caning or other seat once was.

I love the whimsical touch they add to a garden.

Obviously these chairs are not meant for outdoor use normally.  I find that they will hold up well for 2 or 3 years if you store them in the garage for the winter, but they won’t withstand outside weather indefinitely.

But that’s OK, everything in life doesn’t have to be permanent, right?

For this planter chair I decided to go bright.  I pulled out an old jar of The Urban Rooster chalky paint in a color called Jaded Rooster but I was worried I might not have quite enough paint left for the chair so I also grabbed a small tester size jar of Annie Sloan’s Florence that was half used.

As you can see, these two are practically the same color.  One has maybe just the tiniest bit more green than the other though, so I simply mixed them together to stretch my paint a little further.

I painted two coats on my chair.  Once dry I used acrylic craft paint in Oyster White to stencil “Fleurs” on the back of the chair.

Next I sanded to distress and then added a coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s Tough Coat Sealer to protect the paint from the elements.

When I went to add a hanging basket to the chair for photo purposes, I discovered that the hole in the chair was larger than the typical hanging pot size.  So I added a couple of straps to hold the pot in place.

And ta da!  There you have it, a planter chair!

 I took this chair and another I had on hand in to Reclaiming Beautiful this week to sell.  So if you’re local and you don’t feel like making your own planter chair, be sure to stop in and see if they have any left!

spring beauty.

Published on by Quandie25 Comments

One year ago today Mr. Q and I were in Copenhagen about to board our cruise ship to sail off to Norway, Scotland and England.

We had such an amazing time on that trip (to see all of my travel posts click on ‘travel.’ over to the right under ‘stuff.’).  We loved it so much that we tried to do something similar again this year.  We had a British Isles cruise all picked out.  In addition to visiting some ports in Scotland, it also stopped at several ports in Ireland, a couple of spots in England and even one port on the coast of France.

We were literally minutes away from booking it when Mr. Q remembered that he had some other obligations in May this year that meant the timing wasn’t going to work.

We next looked at the option of going later in the summer, but the price was more than $2,000 higher for the same trip.  Yikes!  We just couldn’t justify that.

Since then we have tried four more times to book a trip for this year and each one has fallen through for some reason or another.  So we decided maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.  At least for now.  Our travel agent (a.k.a. my mom) is keeping an eye out for some last minute deals, but otherwise maybe we’ll just try again next May.

But in the meantime, I’m feeling a little sad that we aren’t heading off to Ireland this month so I thought I’d re-live our last trip today by sharing some of the beautiful spring gardens that we saw.

Just before we left on our trip last year I was lamenting the fact that I would most likely miss seeing the lilacs bloom in my garden.  They last for such a short time, and sure enough I did miss it.  But in hindsight, it was really ridiculous to be worried about that.  Of course the gardens that I saw on my trip were spectacular, and I saw plenty of lilacs in bloom starting with these in Copenhagen …

And these in Stavanger …

I needn’t have worried about missing the last of the tulips either.  I saw plenty of tulips everywhere we went.  Hot pink tulips in Copenhagen …

Yellow tulips in Kristiansand …

And these gorgeous red and white tulips at Dunrobin Castle.

I’m guessing that the growing climate in Norway, Denmark and Scotland is very similar to ours in Minnesota because I saw lots of plants that I recognized and that I grow in my own gardens, like hostas and allium.

But there were a few I wasn’t sure about, like this blooming shrub in Stavanger …

I’m guessing that is some sort of rhododendron or azalea?  Does anyone recognize it?

Here’s a close up of the flowers, which grow in a cluster.

I also didn’t recognize this blooming tree I saw in Kristiansand, Norway.

And I’m not at all sure what this pretty wildflower in Flåm is, but I think it might be called Spring Beauty.

Some flowers were unique to the areas we were in, like the Scotch broom.

and the Scottish Bluebells.

Although we saw this flower in Bergen too, so I don’t think Scotland can totally claim it as their own.

We enjoyed fields of wildflowers everywhere, like this one in Flåm, Norway.

We saw huge formal gardens in the French style at Dunrobin Castle.

And a little smaller but still formal garden at the Beamish.

 And charming little kitchen gardens at the Beamish also.

You know what I just realized?  Writing this blog post is not helping.  Now I’m wishing even more that we were heading off to sail around the British Isles this week!  Dang!

Well, at least I won’t miss seeing the lilacs bloom in my own garden this year.  How about you, any fantastic summer travel plans for 2018?  I’d love to hear about them, so be sure to leave a comment so I can live vicariously through you!

I just can’t help myself.

Published on by Quandie14 Comments

First a quick update.  I sold both the flip top bar and the Millennial Pink dresser this past weekend.

I had to laugh when chatting with the couple that purchased the pink dresser.  They knew all about Millennial Pink!  Apparently they are fans of John & Sherry over at Young House Love , and YHL is all about the pink.  Their beach house is painted in it.

And they even have a vintage Millennial Pink stove in their beach house kitchen.

So my Millennial Pink dresser was a big hit.  I’m sure you’ll see more pieces in this color from me this year.

But for today I’m going back to my other proven seller, Fusion’s Park Bench.  In case you are keeping track, the credenza that you are about to see is the fifth mid-century piece that I’ve painted in this color since January.  But seriously, I just can’t help myself.  These pieces are selling so well.  People are loving this gorgeous green on the mid-mod stuff.  I’m so sorry if I’m boring you with yet another one, but this is what I’m working on at the moment.  So it’s this or nothing.

I’m also going to share the non-chemical process for stripping paint off metal hardware in this post so be sure to keep reading if you’re interested in that.

Mr. Q picked up this mid-century credenza at the same time he picked up the Millennial Pink dresser.

I’m still working on training Mr. Q in the fine art of furniture purchasing.  The ad for this piece said it was in excellent condition except for the finish.  It neglected to mention that one of the drawers behind that center door was missing!  Although Mr. Q has really improved when it comes to noticing other details such as bad smells, loose joints and missing hardware, it never even occurred to him to look behind door number one to make sure all of the drawers were there.  Well, to be specific, he didn’t even realize there might be drawers behind that door.  He thought it would be shelves.

Keep this in mind if you are ever purchasing furniture on Craigslist.  Open all of the doors and drawers!

Well, no use crying over spilled milk.  I decided to ask my handyman/neighbor Ken to finish off the uppermost section as a shelf instead of a drawer.  There was already a hole cut at the back to feed electrical through, so I suspect the reason the drawer was removed in the first place was so that someone could put a DVD player in this spot so why not make it official?

Once Ken had the shelf in place, I sanded the piece thoroughly, cleaned it with TSP Substitute and then painted it with two coats of Fusion’s Park Bench.

Initially I’d planned to keep the hardware silver on this one, even though I used gold hardware on all four of my previous Park Bench pieces.  I threw the handles in some soapy water to clean them up first though and that ended up removing some paint.  Turns out they were originally an aged brass color and had been painted silver (I’m guessing with spray paint).  That nixed the idea of leaving them as is.

I’d never stripped paint off metal hardware before, but I’d heard that simmering it in a crock pot of water first will loosen up the paint leaving it easy to remove.  Well, I didn’t want to wreck my crock pot (adding ‘cheap spare crock pot’ to garage sale shopping list), so I grabbed an old crusty pot and tried simmering them on the stove.

And you know what?  This worked exceptionally well.  No dangerous chemicals required.

Here is the method that worked best for me.  First, simmer the hardware for about 30 minutes.  I never brought the water to a boil, just a low simmer.  Remove one handle at a time using tongs.  Run it under warm water until you can touch it without burning yourself (important precaution).  That only took a couple of seconds.  Finally, rub off the loosened paint using one of those green scrubby pads.

I show a paint scraper in my photo above, but using that lasted about two seconds.  The green scrubby did a much quicker, better job and didn’t scratch the finish.

Today’s q-tip:  Leave the remaining handles in the simmering water until you’re ready to work on them, just take one out at a time and scrub it.  If you pull them all out at once the paint hardens up again before you can get to all of them.  If the paint isn’t coming off easily, pop them back in the simmering water for 10 to 15 minutes and try again.

Once I had the paint off, I really didn’t like the aged brass look of the handles so I added my favorite metallic wax, Prima Marketing’s Metallique Wax in Vintage Gold.

I like to apply the wax with a q-tip, let it dry overnight and then buff it to a shine.

 So there you have it.  My latest Park Bench green mid-mod piece.

If you’re just not a fan of mid-century modern, don’t worry.  I’m moving on to some different styles next.  I have a few pieces underway in the workshop, plus I ordered some Sweet Pickins milk paint to play around with.  So be sure to stay tuned!

flippin’ the flip-top.

Published on by Quandie19 Comments

A couple of weekends ago nnK (that stands for ‘new neighbor Karen’ because when she moved in across the street we already had a Karen next door.  Granted, that Karen died a couple of years later and now there is just one Karen, but nnK stuck) called me and said there was a huge garage sale a couple of blocks away, did I want to check it out?

So I jumped in her SUV and we headed over there.  It was about 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon though, so my expectations were low.  Usually by then all of the good stuff is gone.

I was wandering around the sale, which truly was huge, when nnK flagged me over to look at a mid-century piece.  She’s a big fan of mid-century modern and she knows I’ve been doing more and more mid-mod pieces lately.

It wasn’t really ‘me’, but I could see the appeal for mid-century lovers, so I bought it.

It’s a flip top bar made out of walnut with a black melamine surface that is exposed when open.  It’s in great condition and even has the original casters.

Initially I was going to paint it with my favorite aqua, Fusion’s Laurentien.  But then I did a little research and found the exact same piece on 1stDibs where it sold for $2,450.

Now I take the prices on 1stDibs with a grain of salt.  I’m not sure who the people are who are paying that much for stuff.  I suspect they are all designers in places like New York City or L.A.  People who have wealthy clients who don’t bat an eye at the cost.  I certainly can’t get those amounts myself.

Nonetheless, seeing the piece listed there and also knowing that the finish on mine is in really good condition made me realize I probably shouldn’t paint it.

So I decided to simply flip the flip-top.

I cleaned the piece well first, and then freshened up the finish with some of Miss Mustard Seed’s hemp oil.

Then I staged some photos using some of the fab mid-century props I found while out garage saling last weekend.

I can’t decide which is my favorite prop, the fake ice cubes or the atomic themed glasses.

I’m not generally a flipper, but I have flipped a few mid-century pieces in the past like this  American of Martinsville pair.

I also flipped these two mid-mod pieces.

When I come across pieces like these and they are just staring me in the face and daring me to flip them … well, how can I resist?

tangled up in Tangletown.

Published on by Quandie21 Comments

Last weekend my sister and I packed pretty much everything we love about summer into one weekend; garage sales, patio dining, gardening, and ice cream.

We started out at the Tangletown neighborhood garage sales.  This neighborhood got its name from its windy, curving streets.  Most Minneapolis streets are laid out in a grid pattern, so Tangletown stands out because it’s not grid-like at all.  I have to admit, those very structured grid-like streets in other neighborhoods make garage saling easier.  Numbered streets go one way, named streets go the other and are in alphabetical order … Aldrich, Bryant, Colfax, Dupont.  It’s so simple to find your way around in those neighborhoods.  Tangletown is a different story.  We found ourselves tangled up in Tangletown quite often, driving past the same intersection multiple times before realizing we’d gotten turned around again.

But that’s OK because it’s a very pretty neighborhood full of gorgeous houses.

We didn’t mind doing a little sightseeing.  In addition to the beautiful homes, we also stopped at the Washburn Water Tower to get a closer look.

The original water tower in this location was built by Cadwallader (seriously, can you imagine that name?  did they call him Cad for short?) and William Washburn in 1893.  It was replaced with this art deco version in 1932 which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The tall ferocious looking dudes with the swords are the eight ‘guardians of health’ that protect the water supply.

After checking out the water tower and hitting all of the sales in Tangletown we stopped off at a local restaurant, Wise Acre, for lunch.  I have to admit we mainly picked this spot because it had patio seating.

The atmosphere was fantastic, the service was friendly and made us feel right at home, but I’m not gonna lie, neither of us really cared for the ‘farm to fork’ style food.  We probably ordered the wrong things, or perhaps the simple fact is that we just aren’t hipster enough for this place.  The fries came with a homemade beet ketchup … yep, you read that right … ketchup made from beets.  It pretty much tasted just as you would expect it to, like beets.  It worked on the burger, but not so much on the fries.

After lunch we drove home, unloaded our garage sale finds and then headed off to my favorite spot to buy my summer annuals, Country Sun Farm in Lake Elmo.  Debbie and I both found lots of gorgeous flowers and we filled up the SUV again.

Buying garden supplies is exhausting work, so we headed to Nelson’s Ice Cream in Stillwater next.  I didn’t manage to get my own photo, but I found this one online which pretty much shows the average serving size of ice cream at Nelson’s.  This was much more our style than the beet ketchup.

I went with the Blueberry Cheesecake and Debbie chose Peppermint Stick, both of which were amazing.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Bryn Mawr Festival of Garage Sales.  And Festival really does belong in the name.  They have all of the ingredients required for a festival; live music, food trucks, portable toilets and lots of people.

I didn’t come home with much from either of these neighborhood sales, but I did find another amazing vintage ironing board that I plan to turn into a sign.  The woman who was selling it mentioned that her daughter found it in the attic of the house she recently purchased.

I love that the label shows shows someone ironing while seated.  Hey, even if you can’t stand for long periods of time you can still do the ironing with this adjustable ironing board.  How convenient!

I also found some mid-century barware and some faux ice cubes that I plan to use for staging a piece of furniture that I’ll be sharing on Friday.

I also brought home a couple of piles of miscellaneous small stuff.

I found some odds and ends to turn into signs or chalkboards.

Well, technically this one already is a chalkboard.  But I’m going to see what I can do to refurbish it.

I suppose the fact that I chose the fake ice cubes as the ‘find of the day’  speaks volumes about my finds (or lack thereof).

 But then again, the ice cubes really are realistic and I’m going to have so much fun using them for staging future furniture photos.

All in all, it was an awesome kick off weekend for garage sale season 2018.  I hope you’ll stay tuned to see what I do with some of my garage sale finds.

the millennial pink dresser.

Published on by Quandie33 Comments

Have you heard of Millennial Pink?  Did you know it was a ‘thing’?

As is typical for me, I am only just discovering this trend while the cool kids are already saying it has to go.

Seriously, I am never on top of these things.

But before we get to the Millennial Pink, I first have to admit with some embarrassment how I learned about it.  You see, I have a secret guilty pleasure.  I watch the Trackers on YouTube.  I can hear many of you now asking, ‘um, who?’

Tim & Jenn Tracker are YouTube vloggers.  They live in Orlando, Florida and they mostly vlog about the various theme parks in that area including Disney World.  I came across them while looking for Disney info prior to our trip down there last October.  I started watching a few of their vlog posts and bam!  I was hooked.

I really can’t explain why.  Of course, I enjoy watching their excursions into the parks.  And I love that they share insider tips as well as honest reviews of everything from the food to the rides.  They share the real thing, not doctored up versions designed to look good on camera.  But I have to confess that I also sometimes watch their vlogs about shopping at Target, or cutting up left over pizza, adding it to eggs and frying it up in a pan to make ‘pizza eggs’.

They are just so darn adorable!  Somehow I now feel like I know them and am invested in their lives.  So I’ll admit it, I’m a vlog lurker, and apparently so are about 364,000+ subscribers to their YouTube channel.

And this brings us back to Millennial Pink.  Lately Tim & Jenn (see?  it’s as though we are on a first name basis) have been frequently mentioning Disney goods that are available in Millennial Pink, especial the Mickey ears.

So the last time this came up, I turned to Mr. Q  – because, oh yes, he sometimes indulges in this guilty pleasure with me, even though he’d rather poke his eye out with a sharp stick than go to Disney World – and said “what is this Millennial Pink they keep talking about?  Is it just a Disney thing?”  So he googled it for me and said, “I guess it’s just a color thing, and it applies to home décor too.”

Who knew?

Well, probably everyone but me … and Mr. Q.

Obviously the next step was to paint something in Millennial Pink so I could be one of the cool kids, so I started keeping an eye out for just the right piece.

And then I found it …

a beat up mid-century piece that I thought would look amazing in Millennial Pink.

Luckily I already had a jar of Fusion’s English Rose on hand.  I hope they don’t mind that I took the liberty of renaming it just for this post.

Before I started painting though, my handyman Ken and I shored up the base of the dresser because it was a little wobbly.  Ken is one of those people who like to do things the right way.  So we removed the base, re-glued and clamped the cross piece, and then once that was good and sturdy we re-glued the base back onto the dresser.  Now it’s rock solid.

Once again, the top of this mid-mod piece was plastic laminate so I painted that with a coat of Fusion’s Ultra Grip and let it dry overnight before moving on to the rest of the painting.

It took three coats of the English Rose to get good coverage on this one.  I’d already used about 1/4 of my jar of paint on something else, so it took every last bit of paint I had left to complete the job.

I used Prima Marketing Metallique wax in Vintage Gold to add a little glam to the original drawer pulls.

If you haven’t tried this stuff you should.  I use a q-tip to apply it, wait overnight for it to dry and then buff with a clean cloth.  Easy peasy, and it looks amazing.  It’s also super affordable (it’s available online for about $6).

It comes in a tiny little tin, but a little goes a very long way.  I’ve barely made a dent in mine and I’ve used it on countless knobs.  I much prefer the packaging of this version over others like Rub ‘n Buff.  The tin it comes in has a screw on lid that is easy to open and close tightly, so your wax doesn’t dry out.  I had nothing but trouble with those little tubes that the Rub ‘n Buff comes in.

I pulled out some vintage mid-century wallpaper, some aqua and cream pottery and my cream colored Remington Ten Forty for staging.

Isn’t this dresser much prettier in pink?

Let’s talk for a moment about the (pink) elephant in the room.  You may have noticed that I seem to be doing more mid-century pieces these days.  That’s because I’m finding that mid-century is selling really well for me while many of my more farmhouse style pieces are taking a bit longer to find the right buyer.

I feel like I’m walking a bit of a thin line between producing pieces that will sell and producing pieces that my blog readers want to see.  I hope that most of you enjoy seeing the mid-century makeovers even if it isn’t quite your thing.  There are going to be more of them to come, I brought home two more mid-mod pieces last weekend.  But don’t worry, I’ll still mix it up with some of the chippy, farmhouse style pieces that I love.  And hopefully they’ll start selling a little better now that the weather has improved here in Minnesota.  I did sell both the spring fling dresser and the indigo desk this past weekend, so I think that’s a good sign.

That being said, what do you think of Millennial Pink?

This dresser is available for sale, so if any of you locals are interested check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

april blizzards bring may flowers.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

It seems hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago we had blizzard conditions.  But then spring seemingly arrived overnight, which is typical here in Minnesota.

And that means my other two favorite seasons have finally arrived as well.

Gardening season and neighborhood garage sale season!

This weekend my sister and I are heading to both the Tangletown neighborhood sales and one of my favorites, Bryn Mawr.  Keep your fingers crossed that we find lots of goodies.

But first, to get in the spirit of things I pulled out a couple of garden themed garage sale finds from last summer to give them a quick makeover.

Normally I don’t paint my galvanized watering cans, but this one had a bunch of orange paint spilled on it that was not very attractive.  And the tall metal flower bucket was just not quite doing it for me in a dry brushed red.

The flower bucket got three coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Linen.  Once dry, I sanded it to distress and then added one of the Iron Orchid Designs ‘French Pots V’ transfers.  Once that was in place I very lightly waxed the entire thing with Miss Mustard Seed clear furniture wax.

Although I did wash both the bucket and the watering can with soapy water, I did not sand them at all prior to painting.  I find that milk paint tends to adhere well to galvanized metal pieces liked these that have a dull finish.

The watering can got two coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue.  Then I also sanded it to distress and added a coat of Miss Mustard Seed clear wax to bring out the richness of that gorgeous blue.

By the way, I went with Flow Blue because I had a bit of it left over from painting the desk I shared on Monday.

Remember I said that all I bought at Junk Bonanza were some magazines?

  One of them was the new Flea Market Style gardens issue.

If you enjoy adding junk-tastic finds to your gardens, you should be sure to pick up this issue.  It’s pretty fab.

It’s still too early to actually start planting here in Minnesota, and not much is up in the garden yet.  However, I have plenty of scilla in my gardens.  Scilla is a tiny bulb and it’s always one of the first things to come up and start blooming here.  It will even fight its way through the snow if necessary.  It multiplies rapidly, deer and other critters won’t eat it, and it can withstand very cold winters.

However, as with all things, there are two camps of thought on that.  What sound like great qualities to me are exactly the qualities that others say are bad.  They consider scilla to be a invasive pest, taking over areas where native wildflowers once flourished and becoming impossible to control.

I’m kind of bummed that I even came across that info online, because I love seeing the scilla come up every spring as the first sign of life in the garden.  Now I’ll just feel a little bit guilty about enjoying it every year.

By the way, I added that graphic to the clay pot using Fusion’s transfer gel.  I don’t think I ever blogged about that, or if I did I can’t find it now (which is why that ‘how to’ page is going to be so handy!)

So, how about you?  Are you excited about gardening/garage sale season?  Got any great neighborhood sales near you this weekend?

 

 

the ‘how to’ page.

Published on by Quandie67 Comments

Off and on this past winter I’ve been working on a new page for my blog, the ‘how to’ page.

I thought it would be convenient to have one spot where readers can more easily find posts on specific products or techniques.

Over the years I’ve shared lots of tutorial posts, but there wasn’t a convenient way to go back and find them.

Now you can just go to my ‘how to’ page and simply click on a photo collage (like the one above) and a link will take you directly to a post with all of the details about that product or technique.

Take a look at the page and let me know what you think.  If you have any requests for a specific how-to, leave me a comment and I’ll try to add it in the future!

the indigo desk.

Published on by Quandie29 Comments

I don’t know about you guys, but I try to use good judgement when making purchases via Craigslist.  However, I definitely don’t always manage to do so.  It feels so awkward to say ‘no’ to someone, so sometimes I end up buying a piece that I really shouldn’t.  I’m working on that skill though.  It can be really frustrating to take the time to go look at a piece, then get there and find that it’s not at all as advertised.  So if the piece is going to need tons of work and it isn’t priced accordingly (ie. dirt cheap), I’m learning to just walk away.

This happened to me a couple of months ago with a dresser.  It was priced right at the top of my price range.  That would have been OK if the dresser had truly been in ‘excellent’ condition as stated in the ad.  I was in the market for a piece that just needed painting.

However, in reality the piece was what I like to call a humpty dumpty (check out this post about the original humpty dumpty and you’ll see what I mean).  It would have required lots gluing and clamping to put it right.  So I didn’t buy it.  After looking the piece over and pointing out that it was not structurally sound, I simply said “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to pass on this dresser.  Thanks for your time.”

  That being said, nearly a year ago Mr. Q and I drove all the way out to Minnetonka to pick up two pieces from separate sellers.  I don’t normally drive that far to buy pieces anymore, but in this case I was able to arrange to pick up two things in one trip.  Plus the prices were really low on both pieces.

One of the pieces was this desk.

Obviously I was mainly drawn in by those cup pulls!

This was an interesting situation because the seller wasn’t actually going to be home.  They left the desk on a covered porch and asked me to put the money under a flower pot.  I know, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  This was not the first time I’ve made arrangements like this though.  There are still a few trusting people left in the world.

You’d think with that being the case it would have been super easy for me to just walk away after getting there and finding that the desk was quite a bit smaller than I pictured and the veneer was in really poor condition.  I could have just left the desk there on the porch and moved on.  But somehow I felt obligated to buy it since the seller had hauled it out there for me, and trusted me to show up and leave the money behind.  Plus after driving so far I didn’t want to go home empty handed.

So my next logical step was to shove the desk in the corner of my carriage house and try to ignore it for nearly a year (imagine that said with the proper amount of sarcasm) .

But I was finally tired of seeing it out there, so when it warmed up last week I pulled it outside and attacked the chipping veneer with my putty knife.  I basically just chipped off all of the loose veneer and then sanded heavily.  It would have taken ages to remove ALL of the veneer and this desk was just not worth that amount of labor.

While I was chipping veneer, I also stripped the top of the piece (with Citristrip) which is basically constructed of 3 solid wood boards (no veneer, thank goodness).

As I was working on the piece I noticed something kind of fab on the inside.  The desk must have been partially constructed out of old wooden storage crates.

Isn’t that kind of cool?  My favorite is the backside of this drawer front.

I’m guessing that this piece was homemade and it was cobbled together with spare bits of wood that the builder had on hand.  As I was working on this piece I began to realize that it really did have a lot of charm.

Originally I had envisioned this desk in chippy white milk paint.  After my semi-disastrous outcome the last time I used milk paint, you might think I would shy away from using it again.  But no.  I know that situations like that are the exception and not the rule.  I still love the results I get from milk paint 99.9% of the time.  However based on the size of the desk I decided it should have a more kid friendly color rather than white.  So I pulled out some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue and mixed it up.  I probably could have gotten away with one coat, but I had plenty of paint mixed up so I added a second for good measure.

Once I had the paint on I was so happy I’d changed my mind about that white.

I also realized that I loved the contrast between the rich deep color of the Flow Blue and the pale wood top.  So rather than add stain or a dark wax to the top I simply waxed it with Miss Mustard Seed’s clear furniture wax.  In fact, the entire desk has a finish coat of the clear wax.

Then I cleaned the cup pulls with soap and water and put them back on.

If you’re wondering whether or not the chipped veneer is noticeable, it definitely is.

But I think that just adds to the rustic charm of this piece.

This desk is definitely too small to be used as a desk by an adult.  But it’s perfect for a kiddo.  Wouldn’t it be fun in a boy’s room?

But it also could be used as an alternative to a traditional bedside table.  It’s just the right height for that.

I have to admit, this desk turned out way better than I expected.  When I started work on it my goal was to just get it done and then move on to another piece.  I totally was not expecting to completely fall in love with the result.

Hopefully someone who needs an indigo blue kid-sized desk will fall in love with it too.

Be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page if interested!

 

a bit loony.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

Way back when I first used the Iron Orchid Designs transfer called “Seed”, the one that I used on the linen press dresser last Friday, my sister noticed that it says “Richardson & Gould’s” on it.  See it?  At the top …

Our maternal grandparents were named Richardson, so that really appealed to her.  So I definitely wanted to make something for her for using that transfer.

Although we’re keeping an eye out for the perfect piece of furniture for a particular spot in her kitchen, that hasn’t come along yet so instead I decided to makeover a garage sale box that I purchased last summer.

The box was a bit ‘loony’ to start out.  What can I say, Minnesotan’s love their loons!

After sanding the box lightly and wiping it down with some TSP Substitute, I made quick work of painting over the loon with some Fusion paint in Midnight Blue.

I painted the box inside and out.

When painting a box with a hinged lid like this with Fusion paint, be sure to leave the box to cure a bit with the lid open.  If the paint is even a little bit tacky and you shut the lid it will pretty much seal shut.  Another lesson learned the hard way.

My sister loves this dark navy blue color.  I knew from prior experience that the charcoal grey IOD transfers would not work over a dark color, plus I’d been wanting to try the white IOD transfers so I ordered the smaller version of the Seeds transfer in white via Etsy.

Once the paint was fully dry, I placed my transfer over it to see how it would fit.

I did have to trim a little bit of the design off the bottom.  I’m saving that piece for another project.

Once I had my design placed where I wanted it, I rubbed the transfer sheet with a the popsicle stick type tool that comes with it, made sure all of the design was well adhered, and then pulled away the backing.

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about the white transfer.  It definitely did not look as crisp as I was hoping it would.  I tried the trick of sanding it slightly, but that didn’t really help and might even have made it worse (and I also sanded the edges of the box to distress while I was at it).

I have seen photos of pieces with the white transfer online that definitely look much better than mine.  I’m wondering if the white transfers have been improved upon since the one I purchased from Etsy was manufactured.

But the important thing was that my sister loved the box when I gave it to her for Christmas, so that is all that matters right?

I’ll definitely try again with the white transfers.  Maybe they look better over black, or over a more matte finish.  I’ll have to experiment one more time and let you know how it goes.  But in the meantime, have any of you used the white transfers?  What was your experience with them?  Any tips you want to share?